40th IFFI GOA Mired With Controversies Galore
7th December 2009

The 40th International Film Festival, which was held in Goa, has already succeeded in stirring a hornet’s nest, with its own share of bureaucratic bungling. Besides the fact the kind of films which have been selected for the festival leaves a lot to be desired, a senior journalist of the caliber of Gautaman Bhaskaran who has been covering the various International film festivals including Cannes and Berlin, besides IFFI year after year was not even given the accreditation though he had applied on behalf of The Seoul Times, as its editor, South Asia. It is highly shocking because Gautaman had been selected by the Directorate of Film Festivals earlier this year to be on the Panel of judges for the Indian Panorama section. After being denied his rightful accreditation as a media critic, Gautaman decided to apply as a delegate in order to see the film festival, though as a member of the Jury of the Indian Panorama he was actually entitled to see the films.
 
There’s a lot more to the eye than what is there at the tip of the iceberg, as far as this witch hunting and blacklisting of Gautaman was concerned. Apparently the festival authorities suspect that Gautaman had leaked out the list of the films selected by the judges for the Indian Panorama, when it was leaked out in a website with Gautaman’s by line, as a result of which a Kerala filmmaker whose film had not been selected had challenged the Directorate.

Gautaman says that he is innocent of this backstabbing and wonders why he is being cold-shouldered.
Mammootty was the chief guest at the concluding function of IFFI where the film Broken Embraces was screened. Besides Mammootty, there were Jackie Shroff and Rati Agnihotri. Sayali Bhagat and Rohit Roy were the compares for the evening.

The Best Film award at IFFI went to I can’t Live Without You, directed by Leon Dai. It got the Golden Peacock, a certificate and a cash prize of two million rupees, while The Best director award (Silver Peacock, a certificate and cash prize of Rs 1.5 million) went to Ms Ounie Lecomte, the director of A Brand New Life (South Korea/France) and the Special Jury Award (Silver Peacock, a certificate and cash Prize of Rs 1.5 million) went to the film The Other Bank (Georgia/Kazhakastan) directed by George Ovashvili. Sarika was the Panel of judges for the Competition section, where besides International films, two Indian films- Gabrachi Paoos (Marathi) and Angshumaner Chobi ( Bengali) participated. Quite a lot of filmmakers where actually were livid with anger at how Sarika was selected for the job since they felt that she did not qualify to sit on judgment and felt that it was only to teach Kamal Haasan a lesson that the festival authorities roped in Sarika when Kamal refused to attend the festival over ideological differences

Bollywood films will always be popular was proved by the fact that the tickets for T.P.Agarwal’s Red Alert were given away within minutes of the opening of the ticket windows for both the media as well as the delegates leading to heartbreak among various delegates as well as the media. There was a lot of frenzy to see Sunil Shetty who made an entry at the red carpet screening of the film directed by Ananth Mahadevan. Though word went around that Shah Rukh Khan was expected to attend the red Carpet screening of Makrtand Deshpande’s Shahrukh Bola Khoobsoorat Hai Tu and a lot of people thronged to see the film. To Makramnd’s pleasant surprise no one grudged the fact that Shah Rukh did not turn up and actually hugged Makrand for having made a khoobsoorat film. It was for the first time that Makrand had screened his film for the public, though he is yet to get a buyer for his film, which has Shah Rukh in a two-minute appearance. The film stars Preetika which shows lot of promise.

Mani Ratnam released Om Puri’s biography written by Om Puri’s journalist wife Nandita Puri at Inox. While releasing the book, Mani Ratnam said that he felt that it was a great honor for him to release the book and added that directing Om Puri ahs been an amazing experience for him. “I am quite curious to read about Om Puri’s life in the book. It should have been very difficult for Om’s wife Nandita to write about him even though she is closely associated with him in her capacity as his wife”.

On the whole, the IFFI this year was a a half baked festival which had a mixed bag of films from all over the world. In fact the silver lining of the festival was that the Indian films were better than the foreign films either the standard of films made all over the world has come down or the selection committee consists of blind people, who do not know what is good and what is bad.

        - By Jyothi Venkatesh